A blog about rhetoric, technology, research, and where we're headed next.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Israel's electric cars to be sold on the cellphone model

Israel is going to support electric cars in a big way. Necessity is the mother of all invention: Israel doesn't have significant oil production. But here's the intriguing thing about the approach: the model.

The idea, said Shai Agassi, 39, the software entrepreneur behind the new company, is to sell electric car transportation on the model of the cellphone. Purchasers get subsidized hardware — the car — and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.